TLW's Russian Cinemascope™ (Russian Cinema Historyscope) |
By T.L. Winslow (TLW), the Historyscoper™ |
© Copyright by T.L. Winslow. All Rights Reserved. |
Original Pub. Date: Dec. 3, 2016. Last Update: Mar. 31, 2022. |
Westerners are not only known as history ignoramuses, but double dumbass history ignoramuses when it comes to Russian cinema history. Since I'm the one-and-only Historyscoper (tm), let me quickly bring you up to speed before you dive into my Master Historyscope.
In 1920 Mosfilm movie studio is founded in Moscow, becoming the first in Russia, growing into the largest in Europe.
On Oct. 28, 1908 (Oct. 15 Old Style) Vladimir Romashkov's Stenka Razin debuts, becoming the first Russian narrative film, about Cossack hero Stepan "Stenka" Razin (1630-71); watch movie.
On Dec. 21, 1925 Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin) (Mosfilm) debuts, about the 1905 mutiny, featuring Czarist soldiers in 1905 slaughtering civilians on an Odessa beach as the soldiers come down the stairs along with a bouncing baby buggy; introduces montage sequences.
On Dec. 1, 1938 Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (Nevski) (Mosfilm) (Eisenstein's first sound film) debuts, which uses thousands of Soviet army extras in an outrageously slanted reenactment of the 1241 invasion of Russia by the German Teutonic Knights, who end up looking suspiciously like Nazis, only with more Roman Catholic clergy; scored by Sergei Prokofiev; stars Stalin's favorite actor Nikolai Konstantinovich Cherkasov (1903-66); musical score by Sergei Prokofiev.
On Mar. 14, 1966 Sergei Bondarchuk's 7-hour (431 min.) War and Peace debuts(U.S. debut Apr. 26, 1968), based on the short little 1869 Leo Tolstoy novel about the Rostov, Bolkonsky and Bezukhov families stars Bondarchuk as Pierre Bezhukov, Ludmila Savelyeva as Natasha Rostova, Vyacheslav Tihonov as Andrei Bokonsky, and Boris Zakhava as Mikhail Kutuzov, becoming the most expensive movie ever made in the Soviet Union ($100M), taking seven years to produce; Vladislav Strzhelchik plays Napoleon; does 58M rubles box office on a $8.29M ruble budget.